Paragraph Style Sheets in QuarkXPress 6.5

The concept of a style sheet has become a bedrock of textual presentation, and it’s obvious why; style sheets allow quick and consistent specification, facilitates fast revision, and establishes standard treatment for modes of text (headlines, body copy, captions, et.al.) in a document.

While the concept has spread to web pages (CSS, while not developed from DTP programs’ style sheets, is intellectually its evolution), the style sheet paradigm began in electronic layout/DTP as an efficient way to consistently style text and provide quick and accurate revision capability.

Quark’s definition of style sheets is as follows:

These attributes are anything that pertains to text, from leading, tracking and kerning to font, character style (bold, italic), drop caps if any, customised H&J’s, and a great deal of others.

Two kinds of style sheets are implemented, controlling styling at the paragraph level and the character level. Designorati DTP doyenne Elisabetta Bruno has already covered XPress character styles in this tutorial; in this article we’ll take a ride around the XPress paragraph style palette. The former can be used with the latter as well.

Where to find it

The controls for creating and manipulating paragraph style sheets are found in various places in the XPress application.

The style sheet dialog box, which allows direct access to sheets for editing, changing, and creating from scratch, is found by menuing Edit>Style Sheets… or the keyboard shortcut SHIFT-F11.

QuarkXPress Edit Paragraph Style Sheet Dialog Box (click to enlarge)

This dialog is a fairly straightforward one. It’s dominated by a list of available style sheets; those with a pilcrow (¶) are paragraph sheets; those with a majuscule underlined A are characater sheets. At current we have nothing but the default “Normal” styles; no others have yet been defined. Below that there’s a window that defines the fine print, the actual components attributes of the style; close examination will give, in fine detail, all the things that go into the style. The dropdown up top controls which style sheets get displayed (either Character Only, Paragraph Only, Used, Not Used, and All).

The Buttons just below the two main windows functions should be self-evident; it’s worth noting that the New button generates a dropdown that allows the user to choose either Character or Paragraph, and the “Append…” button, which allows inclusion of style sheets from other QuarkXPress files.

Paragraph Style Sheets can be chosen on-the-fly from this cascading menu from the Style drop-down

Style sheets can also be chosen on the fly by menuing Style>Paragraph Style Sheet>, which allows choosing by a cascading menu listing the extant style sheets (not creating them, just selecting them).

A third, and maybe the most intuitive way, is to Control-click (or right-click on a multi-button mouse on either Win or Mac) on the Style Sheet palette in the appropriate pane. A floating menu will appear which is context-sensitive; if clicked over an extant style sheet, the user will be offered the choice of editing, duplicating, or deleting the appropriate style sheet; if clicked over a blank part of the pane those three options will be grayed out. In both alternatives, the top choice is always “New…” and will take the user to the Style Sheet dialog box.

Right- or control-clicking over the Paragraph Styles pane of the Style Sheets palette produces this menu, from which one can create a new style sheet, duplicate or edit an existing one, or delete any of them.

Thinking Inside the Box

Now, let’s turn our attention to the things we see when we either create or edit a style sheet.

Edit Paragraph Style dialog-General pane (click to enlarge)

Whether creating a new style sheet or editing an extant one, the same dialog obtains; “Edit Paragraph Style Sheet”. Let’s take a quick look at what each pane gives us:

• General: Allows us to set a keyboard equivalent (a shortcut-supersedes whatever keyboard shortcut that you already have assigned under XPress), specify what the style is based on (or No Style if we don’t want to do that), specifiy a transitional style (the style that will obtain after we type a hard-carriage return), set character attributes of the style (or create or select a character style sheet to control this), and, of course, the fine-print style description.
• Formats: allows specification of indents (left, right, and first-line), leading, space-before and space-after, paragraph alignments and H&J’s, and the Drop Caps and Keep Lines Together specifications. This pane is also directly brought up by keyboard shortcuts CMD-SHIFT-F for Mac or CTRL-SHIFT-F for Win.
• Tabs: All your favorite Quark tabs are here and the options that pertain to them. CMD-SHIFT-T for Mac, CTRL-SHIFT-T for Win.
• Rules: Rules above and below. CMD-SHIFT-N Mac, CTRL-SHIFT-N Win.

The style sheet dialogs concentrate a lot of styling and formatting power in one place, which is another reason why style sheets are a smart way to go, and a key to the power of style sheets to quickly make document-wide changes.

Let’s go a-stylin

With what we’ve seen so far, we can make some basic style moves that should illustrate the professional effects that even the QuarkXPress beginner can achieve. While a little scary at first, style sheets are a must; no well dressed QXP file should be seen without them.

What we’re going to do now is take the unstyled Esperantoish XPress-generated “jabber” (another mad useful XPress feature) and give it a little panache.

Our unstyled Quark jabber. Engrossing, but graphically uninteresting.

This is just regular unstyled text-nothing special, and it looks it. The workflow runs something like this:

1. Create the Look
2. Create the style sheet and apply
3. Create any styles based on that style and apply

That’s really all there is to it. And here’s how we go about it.

Step One: Stylin’ the Look

One can certainly open the Style Sheet dialog, click “New…”, select Paragraph, and create away. But since we have this wonderful graphic display that we can try things out on, why not style the text first, then create the style sheet from this. QuarkXPress allows us to do this. By leaving the insertion point in the styled text, then going to create the style sheet, XPress reads the attributes of the styled text automatically into the Style Sheet creation process, saving many steps. This is what we call the examplar method, or styling by example.

I’ve also decided that I’d like two main styles at this point; the regular body text style, and a style for the introductory paragraph. We’ll style the body text first, and create an intro style that’s based on the body text style-that way, if we decide to change our body text, the intro text will change appropriately without our having to go back and change the intro text individually.

With our unstyled text, then, do the following:

1. Select the first paragraph only.
2. Set the font appropriately. I chose Garamond Premier Pro, 12pt ; you can’t go wrong with the classics.
3. Set leading on the Measurements Palette; I chose 14 pt.
4. Bringing up the Formats pane of Paragraph Attributes, let’s put .125 inches space after, and .125 inch first-line indent.

Note the plus-sign that’s appeared next to the word Normal in the Paragraph pane of the Style Sheets palette. This indicates I’m still working in the default Normal style, but I’ve altered it. I’ll want to apply this around, so I’ll save this as my Body Text style sheet.

Now we have a basic Body Text style, specified one bit at a time. We did this work now, so we won’t have to do it later…hence, the next step.

Step 2: Profiling the Style

Here’s where the beauty and power of styling by example becomes obvious.

1. Using the content tool, click once anywhere inside the paragraph to place the insertion point.
2. Now, go straight to the Edit Paragraph Style dialog using one of the methods outlined above; I right-clicked over the Style Sheets palette in the blank area of the Paragraph Styles pane, and chose “New…” from the floating menu. Take a good close look at the contents of the Description window (see the illustration immediately following this list). Remember how we set the font, space after, leading, and first-line indent? There it all is-the choices I made, right there, in black and white, automatically. We did all the styling visually and twiddled the knobs then so I wouldn’t have to do that here; now my adjusting is already done.
3. Leave Based On: and Next Style: alone. Basing my style on No Style means that changes to other styles won’t affect this one; making the next style Self means if we key in text after the hard return at the end of this paragraph it will also be Body Text. Next Style does not,however automatically apply the style; for the beginner, it’s usually safe to leave this option to “Self”.
4. Styles are generally applied to the text with a click but can also be applied with assigned keyboard shortcuts. Clicking in the Keyboard Equivalent box, we press OPTION (or ALT) and 1 on the keypad. The key combination appears in the box and the equivalent is assigned. Note that the graphical symbols are used, with the keypad denoted by a thing that looks like a very small waffle.
5. And, of course, don’t forget to name the style. “New Style Sheet” is not only rather undescriptive, it may cause others opening your file to laugh at you; consider yourself warned.
6. Click OK. The new Body Text Style appears in the Style Sheets palette.
7. The “Normal” Style is still selected, so choose “Body Text” either by clicking on it or using the keyboard equivalent OPT-Num Pad 1 (make sure the insertion point hasn’t been moved) to actually make the assignment. The plus sign will disappear from the Normal style.

New Body Text paragraph style sheet, after defining but before naming and saving. Look carefully at the Description pane (click to enlarge). See how all my choices are there already-without having to adjust via the dialog?

Step Three: Variation on a Theme

Now that I have a Body Text I can either go placing the insertion point in each paragraph and styling it with a single click or keystroke or highlight a range of paragraphs and selecting the style, and this is the basic method.

Recall I wanted an intro paragraph style, however. I can style that separately or base it on the style I’ve already defined, and I’ve decided I’ll do the latter as it saves a little work. This time I don’t even have to style the type before creating the style.

1. Right Click on the Paragraph pane of the Style Sheets palette. Choose “New…” from the floating menu (alternatively you could right-click over the “Body Text” style, duplicate it (creating “Body Text Copy”) and editing the copy).
2. I Click in the Name box, and call this one “Intro Text”.
3. I then Click in the Keyboard Equivalency box, and press Option (or Alt) and 2 on the Numeric pad. The key combo will appears in that box.
4. From the “Based On:” pulldown, choose “Body Text”. Notice that, once that’s done, the text in the description box becomes very simple compared to the last one. (see the illustration after this list)
5. I decide that I also like the look of a drop cap. Clicking open the Formats pane, I specify a 3-line, 1 character drop cap. Also, I eliminate the first-line indent (you don’t really need it with that drop cap working).
6. I want one more thing to make it stand out, so why not make the type italic? I still don’t have to style it on the screen. Back at the General pane, I click Edit in the Character Attributes box to select the italic version of the font I’m already using. (See second illustration following this list)
7. Now I can click “OK” and save the Intro Text style sheet. Notice how much simpler than the original style sheet this one is, as evidenced in the Description box. All that prior verbiage is contained in two simple words “Body Text”.
8. In order to actually use the style, click in the paragrapgh to place the insertion point and select the style. I’m going to want to kern out the text next to the drop cap, but aside from that, it’s swift and simple

The Intro Text style sheet, just before saving. Notice how basing this style on the Body Text style made the Description very brief. (Click to enlarge)

Setting font via the Character Attribute dialog from the Edit button on the Paragraph Style Sheet General Pane. We can also use a Character Style Sheet here, if desired. (Click to enlarge)

At the end of all that, we have styled text, but not just that; we have text formatted according to style sheet specifications that we can reuse ad infinitum and even export to other documents if we so choose:

After styling using the style sheets, we have the result above. I’ll want to kern out the space between that drop cap and the rest of the text, but otherwise, easily done.

Further exploration

The style sheet concept as implemented by XPress 6.5 puts quite a bit of power into the hands of the layout artist and the formatter. Getting one’s mind wrapped around it promises to deliver professional polish and productivity.

You have the basic style sheet skills here. There are some things that a basic assay has to gloss over necessarily, but there are some things you can expermiment with:

1. Next Style: The next style dropdown doesn’t automatically assign a style, rather it governs what style happens when one is keying in text type. What situations would this be useful in?
2. Character Styles: in the Character Attributes box there is a drop-down that allows one to specify a Character Style Sheet rather than using the Edit button to individually specify character styling in the Paragraph Style Sheet. This could provide for various kinds of paragraph/character combinations that cover a variety of layout needs. One can also define a new Character Style Sheet here.
3. Keyboard Equivalents can make for quick assignment of styles to key combinations (the numeric pad or F-keys combined with option/alt/shift keys). These keys, however, supersede already-assigned keyboard shortcuts. Experiment to find which is more efficient–key combos or simply pointing and clicking.